A website is a powerful tool for any business to reach its target audience and customers and make them aware of its services and products. In today’s digital world, it can help you expand a new customer base, showcase your company’s efficiency, and establish your credibility and reputation.
A professional business website provides valuable information to the company’s future clients such as your contact details, reviews/feedback, product or service listing, and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Having a website can give you a competitive edge and help to grow your business online.
According to the research giant Statista, there were close to 2 billion websites on the Internet reported in 2021, and the number is never expected to go down. Despite immense demands for mobile applications for personal and professional purposes, having a website has been still a preferred choice by almost all businesses worldwide. Adding icing to the cake, the latest responsive web technologies have boosted websites further to fit into any size screen and device through responsive web designs and PWAs.
Many business owners may not have the resources at this time to conduct regular web maintenance checks. In such scenarios, they can outsource the task to agencies or web management companies. This blog will discuss how outsourcing your web maintenance can improve website growth.
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Website maintenance is a professional way to keep a website up and running efficiently as well as perform at its best. Website maintenance involves several jobs such as assurance that all the links on a website are working fine plus keeping all the content up to date. Also, it involves fixing any broken links with any design or development related issues that are causing any harm to website to perform at its best.
Anything with an internet connection is vulnerable, it’s known to all. Still, many of us pay no heed to protecting or securing our website from hackers. There could be two main reasons why we pay no serious attention to websites;
Frankly, we are wrong in both cases. Even if you have a static website, you have very important data to protect. It could be the data you collect from customers or your business strategies. If you are not taking even basic steps to guard your website, then the identity of your customers and readers is at serious risk.
Here are some alarming cybercrime stats and facts for those ignoring website security;
As per Statista,
So, the data given here testify that you need to protect your website. But, to run a successful business you need to ensure you have a team who maintains your website regularly. If you don’t, you can hire a team or outsource website maintenance. We have introduced the benefits of outsourcing website maintenance in this article, but first,
Website maintenance is important for businesses because it affects their online presence, user experience, and sales.
A well-maintained website can help businesses:
Let’s explore in detail why website maintenance is the need of the hour.
With efficient website maintenance services, your website will perform well. A pleasant user experience will attract customers and encourage them to return. Apart from the reduced loading time and bounce rate, the website’s visibility will also improve.
Did you know 53% of visitors won’t revisit your website if they experience sluggish performance or your website load time is 3 seconds slow?
Apart from this, there are various other factors that enhance user experience, for example;
Usefulness: Why does someone visit your website?
Findable: Is your website easily findable across channels?
Credible: Do users find reliable resources, services, or products?
Desirable: Is the content on your website desirable?
Accessible: is your content easily accessible across all devices?
Valuable: Are you providing users with valuable content that they find worth visiting?
If you have a website, it is important to keep your website updated from time to time. This is not just important for keeping your users updated with the new content but also important from an SEO perspective. For example, SEO optimization is required to keep up with search trends. Hence, it will help you two ways: keep your website content interesting and fresh for users to find something new every time they login to your website. Besides, it is also crucial to achieve higher rank in the search engines to improve visibility. When it comes to online businesses, no users mean no business.
A website is a lifeline for many businesses, especially eCommerce. If their website crashes or slows down, they face a loss of revenue and reputation. As per research conducted by Shopping Cart Elite, a 6-hour outage can result in a 30% drop in rankings. The damage could last for 2 months. Losses due to downtime can be $5,600/minute to $300,000/hour in web application downtime.
Even if you possess basic knowledge, fixing website errors, running updates, and handling security concerns can take up a major chunk of your time. Hence, if you hire web development companies to handle web maintenance services for you, they can do it faster and reduce downtime.
Keep in mind that your product pages carry more importance than the homepage and other links. If customers experience slow loading times or are redirected to other pages, they will never deal with you.
Usually, when a business launches any new products, announces any services or reviews something, you need to spread this in the market with greater speed. And, your website is the Centrepoint to spread it. For example, whenever any such event occurs, your team will list those products, services, or reviews with their benefits, features, and offers quickly on the website. Listing products and services will ensure you have a competitive edge against your competitors. But, to have these benefits, you need to have regular website maintenance.
When you have a team to maintain your website, they ensure your website is updated with new themes and plugins. This ensures not just the robust protection of your website, but also ensures compatibility with tech advent. We see that new technologies are being rolled out every now and then. And, businesses need to adopt the latest technology and implement them into their business to ensure the website accessible by all users across all devices. To adopt the new technology, you need to ensure your website is compatible with the latest tech advent. That means regular maintenance is needed.
How do you know your website is accessible to users? The answer is “with daily website traffic analysis. What if you don’t do this? You will never know if your website is accessible to users or not. Hence, it will not be in line with your business goals. You need to ensure your website is maintained and you get website performance reporting on a regular basis to ensure it is aligned with your goals.
In most cases, maintenance is a part of the website development process and one should ask the web development company regarding it while outsourcing a web development project. Nonetheless, outsourcing maintenance of a website simply means that enterprises hire a third-party service provider to tackle the jobs related to keeping a website up-to-date, safer, and functional. This can include backing up data, updating content, installing plugins, fixing bugs, monitoring performance, and so on. Outsourcing web maintenance can save time and money for website owners who lack the skills or resources to manage their websites.
As stated earlier, website development and maintenance services include tasks to keep a website running smoothly and securely. The web development team performs various tasks such as updating content, fixing bugs, improving performance, and protecting against hackers and malware. Website maintenance services are crucial for your business to provide a good UX and maintain an online reputation.
Some of the benefits of outsourcing your website maintenance services are:
For the best website maintenance services, you need to outsource the project to a top web design and development service provider. Depending on your requirements and budget, offshore website development companies may offer you a monthly, hourly, or post-sales web maintenance plan that covers different aspects of your professional enterprise website.
Some of the common types of website maintenance services are:
Content updates: Adding, editing, or deleting text, images, videos, or other media on your website.
Security scans and patches: Check your website for vulnerabilities and apply security updates to prevent hacking or malware infections.
CMS support and updates: Updating your Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal to the latest version and fixing any issues that arise.
Regular site backups: Creating and storing copies of your website files and database in case of data loss or corruption.
Interactivity maintenance: Ensuring that your website features such as forms, comments, chatbots, or e-commerce functions work properly and smoothly.
Tech support: Providing assistance and troubleshooting for any technical problems or questions related to your website.
If you have a corporate business website, you know it is of paramount importance to keep it running smoothly and proficiently. However, as stated earlier, maintaining a website can be a challenging and time-consuming task, especially if you do not possess the skills or have resources. That is why it is always a wise decision to outsource website development and maintenance to a professional service provider to avail amazing benefits.
Website maintenance outsourcing simply means hiring a third-party company or agency to take care of the technical and operational facets of your professional business website. Maintenance outsourcing is actually allotting professional companies to update content, fix bugs, install plugins, back up data, monitor performance, secure the site, and more.
There are many advantages of website maintenance service outsourcing that can help you grow your business and achieve your goals.
Here are some of the important ones:
You can save time by hiring web maintenance experts to handle the technical know-how of your website. You need not spend hours learning coding, troubleshooting, or optimizing your website; also, there is no need to buy expensive software/hardware to maintain your website. As you outsource your website maintenance to a top web development company, it is assured to save time that you can spend on other fruitful activities.
Hiring a web maintenance company is a good option if you do not have employees to manage the same. Depending on your requirements and budget, you can hire a reputed agency/company to conduct maintenance. Forming an IT team can be a daunting task and it will incur a huge website maintenance cost, not to mention the time and energy required to hire employees.
Now, many of you might want to know how much web maintenance costs. The average maintenance cost will be significantly less than the website development cost. However, for a medium-sized website is approximately $100 to $500 a month. For large, complex websites, the cost can shoot up to $200 or more a year.
Website maintenance can be time-consuming, especially for startups and large corporations. Small businesses and startups are usually busy with sales, marketing, and employee training so they may not have time for website maintenance. On the other hand, large enterprises have a lot on their plate so finding time for website maintenance can be hard.
When you hire a website maintenance company, they understand your requirements and work as per a website maintenance plan. They have been doing it for so long that they know when, how, and how frequently to conduct website maintenance. Rather than spending endless hours on coding and fixing errors, you can focus on business development. Over time, you can learn the tricks of the trade from these guys and hire an IT team to handle web maintenance.
You can concentrate on your main business without worrying about the performance and security of your website when you delegate the responsibility of keeping your website up and running to a reliable and experienced web maintenance company. Entrepreneurs can thus concentrate on their core business functions like manufacturing, marketing, sales, customer service, and so on. You can also get rid of the stress and frustration of dealing with website issues or emergencies on your own.
In today’s times, data is money. Companies must protect their data because data loss can lead to considerable losses. As per IBM, it takes 287 days for a company to detect a data breach. More than 40-60 percent of businesses can’t resume operations after data loss. Furthermore, the average cost of a data breach for large corporations has shot up to $3.92 billion after a data breach.
We do not intend to scare you with these statistics but it is just to emphasize the point that you cannot underestimate the importance of data security. Note that eCommerce companies are at the highest risk of being hacked. Loss of data also leads to loss of reputation for the company while customer information like credit/debit card details & contact details might be leaked on the internet.
Once customers lose their trust in you, they will not return again. Professional web maintenance companies know what to do. They will implement the right security strategies, fix loopholes and bugs to prevent such issues. Even if security problems arise, they will try to minimize the damage.
By outsourcing website maintenance, you can have indirect access to contemporary tools and technologies to enhance your website’s functionality and user experience. A professional website maintenance service provider will have the knowledge and expertise to use the best tools and technologies for your website. It is also possible for them to deploy new features, enhance the UI, shorten the loading time, and optimize the web performance. Best web developers make sure that your website is compatible with different platforms, browsers, and devices.
Website maintenance outsourcing means you are assured of your website being latest and up-to-date along with compliance, and optimization for search engines and visitors. A website maintenance service provider will regularly update your content, plugins, themes, and software to keep your site fresh and relevant. Additionally, it is possible to check and correct errors, bad links, or security vulnerabilities that might have an impact on a website’s functionality or reputation. Maintenance experts also make sure that the website obeys the best practices and standards for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Most companies forget about creating backups in case things go south. They only wake up when the damage is done. Professional web management service providers are taking proactive steps to control such damage. They take website backups regularly so that your website can go live fast even after a total crash.
It is not uncommon for many website maintenance service professionals to back up the website every hour. So, you will have the latest website version with all the latest information related to clients/customers and sensitive information.
Outsourcing your project means staying worried or tension-free. With website maintenance outsourcing, you don’t need to fear any hassles or emergencies on your own.
If something goes unexpected with a website like hacking, crashing, or malware injecting, the owners don’t need to panic or waste time trying to solve it themselves. A website maintenance company that you have hired will have the skills and resources to quickly identify and resolve any problems that may arise. They are always ready with their backup plans to deal even with the worst case.
As you can see, outsourcing your website maintenance can offer many advantages for your business. When you hire a professional service provider, you get a tension-free and top-notch quality website that attracts more customers and generates more revenue.
Set yourself free, outsource your website maintenance now
To sum up, outsourcing your website maintenance is a smart decision that can benefit you in many ways. Simply save money and time, concentrate on core business, and avoid the annoyance of dealing with technical issues. Browse through professional web development companies and get assured of an up-to-date, secure, and optimized website.
Outsourced web maintenance has plenty of advantages but some cons as well. Sometimes, service quality, accountability, and communication can be a cause for concern. However, it is advisable to check the service provider’s credits, and experience while reading testimonials of satisfied clients. If the web maintenance service provider has strict quality parameters and a team of dedicated employees, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
An enthusiastic Operations Manager at TopDevelopers.co, coordinating and managing the technical and functional areas. She is an adventure lover, passionate traveler, an admirer of nature, who believes that a cup of coffee is the prime source to feel rejuvenated. Researching and writing about technology keeps her boosted and enhances her professional journeying.